Oh the other hand that kit feels absolutely overkill (and the cost of it must be insane) when ~50 bucks worth of iFixit tools and a hair dryer has done the job just fine for me.
Renting the tools is a nice option to have. Torque drivers appear to be priced at obscene level, but not really. Based on handle pattern, these appear to be customized Wera screwdrivers and they cost more to buy direct than through this program from Apple. That just feels like Snapon pricing for specialty tools. By the way, Snapon sells individual torque screwdrivers for $256. Really.
This could be targeted at corporations that have staff to do in-house repairs of their hardware. They will have the option to avoid making a trip to the Apple store and losing custody of their hardware. One of the companies where I work has such a department. They order Lenovo parts and fix the laptops on-site instead of relying on on-site field service from Lenovo.
A big reason why I do my own repairs is because it allows me to optimize the logistics of it by removing the time-sensitive component of shipping; I order common parts & tooling (multiples so I have spares if I fuck up) well in advance of any breakage so that the actual repair no longer depends on the shipping service or my ability to receive packages. Putting the shipping service back in the critical path would negate all those advantages for me, making it no better than just shipping the entire device to Apple/AASP to begin with.
The only major advantage I see here is that the display press would likely guarantee the water-tightness of the repaired phone, though personally I've always just done without and accepted that my device is not watertight, especially considering I don't trust the factory one either after months of heavy use, thermal cycles and minor mechanical shocks & damage.
> This could be targeted at corporations that have staff to do in-house repairs of their hardware.
Hopefully in the future, yes. As it stands though this is unusable for large-scale in-house repair operations as you can't stock parts and have to order them as needed since you need to return the old part in a timely manner.
This is still not enough, but for large companies with strict security policies it is a welcome development. Basically, having ability to achieve factory seal on a display assembly in-house for approximately $1000 in equipment is a huge win.
Similarly, for the tooling, is it actually available to purchase or is it a rental only? If it's a rental they might still retaliate (beyond just keeping your deposit) by banning your account and/or devices and/or denying future "system configuration" on any parts ordered on it to prevent people from "purchasing" the tooling that way.
Reading through the comments sections on MacRumors posts pertaining to the toolkit, plenty of people are seemingly very eager to jump to disparaging iFixit, their tools, and any repair store that doesn't have Apple's fancy expensive tools just because they're not doing it "the right way".